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Yeah Upfull Folks, Now is the time to be looking for tie dye for your Christmas Gifts. Just pick out some shirts for all your friends and we will make you a good deal on our tie dyes. We have lots of things in stock, tons of tie dye adult t-shirts, happy socks, tie dye sarongs, towels and baby tie dyes. We have baby tie dye onesies and baby tie dye t-shirts. Soon we will also have tie dye golf towels with a little clip to hook onto your bag. Disc Golf towels mon!

Amanda taught me how to tie dye after we first met. Then I started dying all the time, it makes me feel good in my mind. We got married in 2007, now we live together everyday. Making some tie dyes the hippy way.

Tie Dyes is what we be making everyday. Tie Dyes is what we be selling in everyway. Check out I&I’s websitehttp://www.madebyhippies.com/ to view our tie dyes!

And here I&I stand at the beginning of time, With our feet hanging off the edge and feeling fine with peace of mind for all time…

Well I have not written anything since February and that is a while considering it’s now June already. Amanda and I have done a ton of things since then…

In February we were working on all the tie dye beach towels for the Bears and that ended up turning into a huge process of rearranging our whole house around and setting up our art studio in what was before our living room and the end result is we have a bigger nicer bedroom that we freshly painted and an awesome tie dye workshop. It’s the most professionally we have been set up ever for tie dying. We finished working on all the towels in March and ended up making 225 all together.

After we finished the towel project we moved right into our plan to tie dye 1,000 t-shirts and we have this big master plan to have some of each cool pattern in a variety of sizes and colors. So we were working on that and tackled the smiley face shirts and the peace sign shirts first. They all turned out great and we have come a long way in our tie dye design evolution. That is the best part of making things for me, is to know that I am becoming better at tie dyeing all the time.

So March and April rolled along and we were working at our house tie dying and trying to relax some. I ground out the big tree stump in my backyard that was left over from the evil Black Locust tree I had cut down last year. Lars helped me grind it out with a stump grinder we rented.

Well then it was May, man this year did go by fast, and we started selling at the Gresham Farmers Market on Mother’s Day weekend. We even started our own market too, called the Hawthorne Artisans Market. We set up on Sundays where my family used to have the christmas tree lot and my fireworks stand back in the day. It has been a little slow to get going at first, mainly just pulling in some passerbyers to check things out. But I have to admit that it makes me happy because I have still been doing ok selling tie dyes and some of the other vendors that are newer to the vending scene have not sold anything. But we have been letting people set up there for free so they can have their own personal chance at the American Dream. Or the american hippy dream I guess, haha!

But we have been doing great at the Gresham Farmers Market and it continues to be our best retail venue yet considering vendor fees, ease of set up and location. We love going to the music festivals but those moms and teenage daughters in Gresham are great customers!!!

So yeah, selling at the markets and making tie dyes! Amanda and I took a trip up to Seattle in May to visit my sister Sarah and then we went to the Washington & Oregon coasts for a couple nights for our long delayed Christmas Vacation to the beach. We had lots of fun then Amanda went back to Buffalo, NY for the first part of the Summer. She was selling her Shibori Scarves at the 100 Craftsman show in NY and had lots of fun and set up a whole new layout for her booth that we thought up before she went home, where she had scarves hanging on display necks along the walls of the booth. Now she is with her family on vacation in Key Largo, Florida. I am headed to NY at the end of June for a vacation with Amanda then we are both coming home in July and back to more market selling.

We have some cool summer plans. On July 26th weekend we are headed to Bend, Oregon to be vendors at the Four Peaks Music Festival. Then the next weekend after that we are driving to Salt Lake City, Utah for Amanda’s friend’s wedding. Then the week after that is the NW World Reggae Festival near Eugene, Oregon on August 8 – 10th, 2008. We were vendors there last year and had a great time listening to all the cool reggae music. Then the week after that we are going with a group of 11 people to the Tom Petty concert at the Gorge in Washington. Then the week after that is both Amanda and I’s birthdays then we get into September and we will be starting up the christmas wreath shop and be working like crazy until December.

Man, that’s like the whole year right there. Sounds good to me.

Oh, I forgot the best part. I made a new friend at the Hawthorne Artisans Market who is a professional glassblower and he is going to give me a few lessons and help me set up my own glass blowing studio at my house. So stay tuned for the next level of goodness from Made By Hippies.

I have been trucking along post wreath shop. Amanda went home to Buffalo for a while but she is back now and we are having lots of fun living together. We got our first big wholesale tie dye order from our website, www.madebyhippies.com for 170 beach towels for a groups annual convention. So we are right in the middle of dying all the towels this week. We have been rearranging our house to set up our best tie dye studio yet and it is lots of fun now that we have the finished products being produced. I have about 150 t-shirts tie dyed out of a master plan for making 1,000 shirts so we will be working on that through the spring.

We have a spring road trip in the beginnings of the planning stages. We are going to head out in the van through a bit of California and Nevada to the North side of the Grand Canyon and then up through Utah to view some sites and then to Colorado to visit my dear friend Pete and then back home through Wyoming and Idaho back to Portland. We are thinking of going for like two or three weeks in the middle of April.

Man, we have been working so hard and it has all paid off now. We have just a handful of wreath orders left to go out the door and the whole season went really good. One of the best wreath shop seasons ever! Amanda has been the best secretary ever and together we were super organized all season long. Whew… Now on to some massive tie dying. My goal is to make 1,000 shirts in December and January. We shall see what happens… I have been working on my tie dye website too and have that all tuned up and looking suave, check it out at http://www.madebyhippies.com.

Yeah I am here in Oregon working away organizing the Christmas wreath shop for another season. I have been working hard, waking up early ever day and being happy working hard. It feels good to be productive and get work accomplished. This is the best wreath shop season so far. Everything is going grand and Amanda is working with me in the office helping me be organized. We are having lots of fun working together as husband and wife and as partners forever.

So September is spinning by already. August was a blast that didn’t last. We went to the NorthWest World Reggae Festival in Marcola, Oregon like a month ago. It was a good time, lot’s of great music but not too many attendees (like 1,000 people or so). So what can you do? But when we went to the Dave Matthews Band three day concert at the Gorge Amphitheater in George, Washington we saw lot’s of great music too. There were lots of people there (like 20,000 people!) but most of them were drunkards that made lots of noise all night long. I and I enjoy the live music though, there is something about it, something like when the music hits you, you feel no Pain!

Amanda is living in Portland now. She misses her home where the Buffalo roam, but what can you do? I and I must keep moving forward. Being married is great because my best friend is always right here with me instead of far, far away. I love Love.

So a couple of years ago when I bought my van I parked my green Ford Ranger in the back of the farm and left it to sit. I pulled it out of the blackberries a couple weeks ago and put in a new battery and it fired right up! I had my neighbor Airhead detail it for me and clean out all the mice nests. I used to be so sentimental about the Ranger but after driving the van around it just seems not too great getting behind the wheel of the Ranger, what with the seat all leaning back and all. So I had and opportunity and decided to take it, to upgrade Rangers by buying my brothers Ranger he wanted to sell. So now I’m cruising in a newer version of my old Ranger, but with accessories that actually work and some air conditioning and four wheel drive.

On July Seventh of the year two thousand and seven I married my best friend and partner for life Amanda in North Collins, New York. We met in September of 2005 after being introduced by my sister Sarah and spent two years flying back and forth between Oregon and New York to visit each other and meeting each other on vacations in Nevada, Europe and Mexico. Our first airplane ride together was on our way home to Oregon after the wedding! We were home in Portland for the weekend then went to Alaska for our honeymoon. We drove our little rental car 1,600 miles and toured through all kinds of huge mountain ranges and saw bears, caribou and mouse. We enjoyed visiting Denali and learning about it, even though we never saw the peak of North America’s most high mountain. We have almost been married a month and it has gone by fast so far. We are headed to the North West World Reggae Festival next week to try to sell some tie dyes, so we will see how that goes. Peace & Love.

And I will be a married man. Married to my best friend and tie dye teacher, Amanda. Our wedding is July 7th, 2007 in New York, I can’t wait!

The Catnip Garden

Let’s see, last time I wrote I was in Buffalo visiting Amanda. We had a great vacation together in the sun. Two days after I got home Amanda came to visit me in Portland! We had lots of fun selling our crafts at the Gresham Farmers Market and on a mini road trip to Yachats on the Oregon Coast. So between our two visits to each other we had a great time together for about three weeks. Amanda left at the end of May and I have been working around my house some, making tie dyes, planting a vegetable & catnip garden in my backyard and having fun living life. I leave for Buffalo again in a week and a half to get ready for the wedding. Some of my friends have asked me if I am scared of getting married, but I and I have hot feet mon, not cold. I’m ready.

I have been hanging out at my home in Portland making some tie dyes and working around my house. I am going to Buffalo in two weeks to visit Amanda again. Then in April I am flying to Minneapolis to visit Dr. Read. We are going to drive to Grand Forks on 4/20 and attend the Pi Kappa Phi Roseball. The whole weekend will be my bachelor party too. Less then four months to go until the wedding, I can’t wait!